Topics Covered: Employment related issues.
Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS)
What to study?
For Prelims: Key findings.
For Mains: challenges ahead and efforts by government.
What is PLFS?
PLFS is India’s first computer-based survey which gives estimates of key employment and unemployment indicators like the labour force participation rate, worker population ratio, proportion unemployed and unemployment rate in rural households annually and on a quarterly basis for the urban households.
- The PLFS also gives the distribution of educated and unemployed people, which in turn can be used as a basis for skilling of youth to make them more employable by industry.
- The survey was launched in 2017 and the first annual report was released (July 2017-June 2018), covering both rural and urban areas, in May 2019.
Definitions:
Labour Force Participation Rate: It is the percentage of people in the labour force (those who are working or seeking or available for work) in the population.
Worker Population Ratio is the percentage of employed people.
Unemployment rate shows the percentage of people unemployed among the labour force.
Unemployed: A person who is unable to get work for even an hour in the last seven days despite seeking employment is considered unemployed.
Key findings:
- India’s unemployment rate fell between July 2018 and June 2019 to 5.8% from 6.1% during the same period of 2017-18, even as the labour force participation rate rose to 37.5% from 36.9%.
- The worker population ratio also increased, to 35.3% as against 34.7% in the 2017-18.
- Urban unemployment rate reduced to 7.7% in 2018-19 from 7.8% and in rural India to 5% from 5.3%.
- Female participation rate improved in both urban and rural India during the period under review, going up to 18.6% in 2018-19 from 17.5% the year before.
Challenges ahead:
To retain the falling trend in unemployment rate in 2019-20, which has witnessed a long nationwide lockdown between March and June to prevent the spread of Covid-19, resulting in job losses across sectors.
According to monthly data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, unemployment rate in India shot up significantly from 7.87% in June 2019 to 23.48% in May 2020.
InstaLinks:
Prelims Link:
Please go through data and numbers mentioned in the above article. For eg- unemployment rate in urban areas, rural areas, changes etc.
Mains Link:
Critically analyze the state of unemployment and the political discourse around it in India.
Sources: the Hindu.
